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Technological advances improve our lives in many ways—none more so, perhaps, than miraculous advances in healthcare technology. The medical technology industry, expected to surpass $205 billion in the US alone by 2023, deploys cutting-edge technology to create lifesaving solutions and better patient outcomes.
Here are five healthcare technologies you will be hearing about in 2021:
Telehealth was on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, as the healthcare industry flirted with ways to serve more patients more often. Wearable devices integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT) enabled the remote collection of medical data 24/7, not just when patients were in the clinic.
If they didn't have to be in the clinic to collect the data, why did they have to be in the clinic for a doctor to assess the data or write a prescription?
The COVID-19 pandemic made this trend more acute. Not only were hospitals and clinics closed off for non-pandemic-related patient visits, but people did not want to spend hours, or even minutes, in waiting rooms full of coughing patients. With PPE in limited supply, the less face-to-face time healthcare providers had with potentially infected patients, the better.
Add to this the normalization of teleconferencing platforms like Zoom, and you have a perfect storm—more and more healthcare services will be provided using telehealth technology. Telehealth enjoys the benefits of cost-effectiveness and efficiency, enabling providers to help more patients for lower costs, with less strain on the system.
In 2018, the FDA issued special guidance for the regulation of "Software as a Medical Device" (SaMD). As distinguished from "Software in a Medical Device" (SiMD), SaMD is defined as a software application that serves a medical function, regardless of the device it is in.
For example, the software that guides an MRI magnet would be useless outside of the MRI machine. However, an app that listens for irregular breathing patterns using the built-in microphone on a smartphone, smartwatch, or computer would be considered SaMD, because it performs its function regardless of the device it is loaded onto—as long as the device has a microphone.
Other examples of SaMD include:
• Apps that use the triaxial accelerometer in a smartphone or smartwatch to track data about a patient's motor function.
• Apps that use built-in camera functions to aid in the diagnosis of external anomalies on the skin, eyes, etc.
• Apps that interact via wireless technology with implanted devices, like pacemakers, blood glucose monitors, and EEG monitors. These web-enabled devices form the "Internet of Medical Things" (IoMT), a subset of IoT.
Expected to be a $19.3 billion industry by 2025 according to NASDAQ analysts, we should expect many more SaMD breakthroughs coming down the pike for 2021.
Digital data loggers have played an important role in medical technology for years. They replaced paper-and-pen chart recorders decades ago to automate the process of recording critical conditions needed to maintain compliance in heavily-regulated industries like pharmaceutical production and medical device manufacturing.
But data loggers will come into their own in 2021 as they become integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT). Earlier iterations of digital data loggers maintained admirable data integrity, but the data still had to be downloaded manually and collated into compliance reports.
IoT-enabled data loggers not only upload data directly to the cloud and automatically process data into compliance reports. For the first time, the widespread use of IoT data loggers will be able to alert users of non-compliant conditions while there is still time to rectify the condition.
Consider the logistical challenge of the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. According to Dickson, data loggers fulfill a variety of functions in the healthcare space. The cold chain monitoring needs of the Covid-19 vaccines being widely rolled out in 2021 will make this technology particularly critical.
The Pfizer/Moderna vaccine must be stored from factory to distribution at 70 degrees below freezing—colder than Antarctica. If it rises above this glacial temperature for any length of time, whole batches of this crucial vaccine could be ruined. An IoT data logger could push an alert by SMS or email if storage temperatures rise, giving the handlers time to fix the problem and preserve doses of the life-saving vaccine.
Blockchain usually gets associated with Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies the technology enabled. But the deeper implications of the technology were recognized at the time and still have fruit to bear, especially in industries like healthcare.
The breakthrough of Blockchain was not just to touch off a million digital get-rich-quick-with-crypto schemes—it was to enable an ecosystem of interconnected computers to store a digital ledger of transactions.
Data on a blockchain is both easy to anonymize and nearly impossible to hack or falsify. The ledger is diffused through every system in the chain. An erroneous or fraudulent entry on one block would be easily detected by comparing it to thousands of other blocks in the chain.
• Secure Contracts. Consent and patient authorization forms could be stored on the chain for security and transparency.
• Medical Record Aggregation. Medical records stored using blockchain would be both easy to access and difficult to falsify. Blockchain is expected to play a key role in the centralization, standardization, and digitization of medical record keeping.
Machine learning is a form of AI (artificial intelligence) that allows digital applications to process vast sums of data and detect subtle patterns.
Over time, machine-learning applications can become better and better at pattern recognition, integrating past observations into improved data synthesis. This is how Facebook learns over time from your browsing history what content to feed you so you engage more.
Machine learning is already used to process copious patient data. In this way, the apps can build complex risk profiles for various diseases that it would have taken years of human data processing to synthesize—if ever, considering one human mind can't wrap itself around that volume of data.
Machine learning is growing beyond the realm of data and into image recognition, allowing medical professionals to detect subtle anomalies in Xray or MRI imagery. The application for early detection of diseases could be a game-changer in realizing more favorable outcomes.
Shaken by the pandemic but thrilled by the nimble response from the fraternities of science and technology, the world watches with bated breath for the wonders that MedTech and healthcare tech developers will work in 2021 to make us healthier, happier, and safer.
